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Saturday, 21 July 2012

Eidos Montreal’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution is, as everyone
already knows, the long awaited successor-prequel to the groundbreaking Deus Ex
and Deus Ex: Invisible War. Its other
notable feature is that it seems to have been almost perpetually on -75% sale during
the course of the Steam Summer of commercialist debauchery, but for those who
still haven’t got the message: you need this game.

Friday, 20 July 2012

So the day is finally here, a day which
me and the rest of humanity have been waiting for since that first
teaser trailer, and even earlier when that cliffhanger left us with
the inevitable and tediously long wait for the resolution which we
all craved. I'm talking of course about the ending to Christopher
Nolan's Batman trilogy cum dump of a climax; 'The Dark Knight Rises'.

It's Friday now here in England. In
five short hours our American friends will get to see the Thursday
night/Friday morning première of the film because they have better
lives than we could ever hope to achieve. But it's just a short 23
hours until I can become like them, avoiding spoilers and trying to
remain autistically dead to the world as I attempt to remain clear
minded for when I finally get to join them on their superior level of
humanity having watched the greatest film ever made.

So I just got back from watching The Five Year Engagement, the latest showing from Jason Segel, seemingly the only actor from How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM) who is actually capitalising on the boost of fame it has given his career. Before we get into this review, I shall not lie; Romantic Comedies are not my forte. I have certainly watched enough of them in my life, due to the twisted machinations of the fairer sex; but I am by no means the target demographic, and as such everything I say should be taken with a pinch of salt, if for some reason, you like the Romantic Comedy genre.

The film touts itself as ‘starting off where the love story ends’. By this it means that we enter the story the moment where the male leader, Tom Solomon (Jason Segel) is about to awkwardly propose to female lead Violet Barnes (Emily Blunt) in what is supposed to be a hilariously overacted opening scene, with stunted words, and the overuse of simple phrases like ‘oh my god’; which would have been fine and maybe even cute if Emily Blunt hadn’t proceeded to do it for the entire damn film, but we shall get to her in a second. Back to the predictable setup.

Monday, 16 July 2012

I
find it strange that in this crazy modern world where dictators are
dropping like flies (more on my conspiracy theory later) and you have
to wear a bloody hard hat on every construction site, that a man can
still be scorned at for saying Coldplay is his favourite band. Their
original, own brand, Radiohead-esque sounding shrill whine has now
been with us for well over a decade. Frequently and almost inevitably
every one of their albums and released singles gets to number one,
sells millions and is played over any number of artificial sob
stories on numerous talent shows ranging from Britain's got talent
all the way to America's got talent. They're a band that is perfect
for summing up mainstream joy, sadness and any other of the one or
two emotions which they express through their music. But either way I
like them.